Freedom and Recovery - WTJWD
by themadmage
Summary: This is a companion piece to Well That Just Won't Do - Book 1 showing some of Sirius' recovery process between his trial (chapter 11) and Harry's visit on Boxing Day (Chapter 17). Reading this is not necessary to understand the series, but will give some flesh to the adult characters that are in Harry's life.


Before the trial, Sirius' time in St Mungo's was pretty boring. The healers and the ministry provided the bare minimum of care and rehabilitation for him, no doubt expecting their efforts to be wasted when he was thrown back into his prison cell. He was fed better than he had been in a decade, had a real shower every other day, and was blessedly away from the dementors, but did little else. He was also chained to the bed when he wasn't in the toilet, and had a (human) guard posted at his door all day and night.

Now that he was a "free" man again, the real work began. Each morning, he would be meeting with Mind Healer Thompson to work through the issues that spending ten years reliving your worst memories and allowing dementors to feed on your happiness inevitably cause. After lunch was visiting hours. The healers encouraged him to have someone visit as often as possible, as the company of loved ones was important to his recovery. When visitors left at four, he had an hour and a half of physical therapy to help regain the muscle mass he'd lost after a decade in a cell. After dinner, he had the evening free until he went to sleep. Sirius Black of 1978 would have been bored out of his mind with this routine, but Sirius Black of 1991 found it slightly overwhelming. He had, after all, essentially done nothing but sleep and eat for ten years.

It took three sessions with Healer Thompson for him to admit it. "I can't remember so much. Like James and Lily's wedding. I remember that it happened, but I can't remember the day."

"That is to be expected. Those memories are what the dementors feed on. With extended exposure, the memory can decay. That is part of the reason visitors are so vital to your recovery. Talking with them about the good times you cannot currently remember will help, as will photos. Additionally, if your visitors are willing, pensieve memories can be one of the best things for you. Once we have collected some, we will spend part of our morning reviewing them. Your therapy will come in two parts - recovery of positive memories, and processing of negative memories."

"Will I remember it again, or will I just remember seeing the memory?"

"With time you will be able to rebuild the connections in your mind and retrieve some of the memories you've lost, especially the most important ones, but some memories may be lost to you forever. Dementors are truly insidious creatures, unfortunately."

"Remus is coming today. I'm sure he'll give some memories."

"Very good. I'm going to give you a journal. At night and in the morning, I want you to write in it. If you're wondering what to write about I can give you prompts, but for the first few days I just want you to write what comes to mind."

Remus was floored when he learned that Sirius couldn't remember so much of their history. At the end of visiting hours that day, he spent a full two hours bottling memories. "Erm, will the Healer be viewing these with him?" he asked the volunteer who was labeling the vials.

"That's up to him, I believe."

"Okay. I've got some memories that he might want to view alone. Any way we could note that?" Remus turned bright red as he danced around the topic, but he desperately wanted Sirius to be able to remember the more intimate parts of their relationship. The volunteer was even redder, if that was possible, but nodded and took out a vial of red ink.

"I'll label those ones in a different color, and tell the Healer what that means."

Remus nodded gratefully, and put his wand to his temple again.

_The four Marauders ran down the halls of Hogwarts as fast as they could after causing an explosion in Slughorn's ingredient stores, trying to steal frog's liver for a new prank potion._

_Sirius wore a hat for a week in third year, even to bed, refusing to tell Remus why and earning several detentions for being out of uniform. Remus caught him with it off in the middle of the night and he had dog ears._

_Remus and Sirius at fifteen years old sat in the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, resolutely ignoring James and Peter two tables away. Things were awkward at first, until Sirius made a joke about dating James instead if this was going to be so difficult and the two seemed to remember they had already loved each other as friends for years. When they went back to the castle, they snuck into an alcove and had their first kiss._

_Remus and Sirius blushed and fumbled as they undressed each other for the first time. Peter walked in later and screamed when he saw them cuddling in the nude. Sirius laughed at the thought of him coming in just minutes earlier and seeing much worse._

_James had been panicking all morning, dressed in purple robes embroidered with the Potter family crest. His hair had been forced to behave for once with generous application of his father's Sleekeazy Hair Potion. Sirius and Remus stood with his parents in a glade at Potter Manor, and watched as he approached with Lily on his arm. The bonding ceremony was beautiful, and Sirius cried almost as much as Lily. Sirius and Remus then took James into the house to change into a muggle suit, while Euphemia helped Lily don a beautiful white dress. They were married for the second time that day in a muggle ceremony, where Lily's father gave her away in front of her relatives._

_Sirius paced back and forth outside the bedroom at the house in Godric's Hollow, while Remus sat sedately in a chair by the door. Cries were heard inside, and James threw the door open. "It's a boy! Padfoot, come meet your godson."_

Sirius was in tears when he exited the pensieve. Healer Thompson gave him a few minutes to collect himself, and then they spent the rest of the morning discussing Sirius' role in the deaths of the Potters, and the way that the dementors had amplified his feelings of guilt over suggesting Peter as the Secret-Keeper.

"Reggie!"

"Must you call me that?"

"Yep! What have you got for me today? Family stuff?"

"Yes. Are you ready for it?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

"I've been the regent while you were in prison, as the only living Black not incarcerated or married into another line. I've been maintaining our finances, but without full Head authority that is essentially all I've been able to do. As such, most of our business dealings are still tied to Death Eaters and Voldemort sympathizers, and our charitable contributions are still the ones our parents chose. I'm assuming you'll want to change that?"

"Immediately, if possible."

"The charities we can change immediately, if you keep the amounts approximately the same and simply reallocate the funds to new recipients. Business deals will have to be changed more slowly, or the family will go bankrupt buying our way out of contracts."

"Could you look into charities for war orphans, magical creatures, and squibs? Let's do a full turn from the causes our dear parents supported, shall we?"

Regulus smiled ruefully. "Sure thing, Brother. It's good to have you back."

"Tell me about your life since the war, Reg."

"It's been fairly dull. I haven't married. Our parents had arranged me a contract with the Rosier girl, but I broke it off as soon as the war ended and my cover as a Death Eater was no longer at risk and never bothered to seek out another one. I've been working as a consultant on Dark Arts for the Ministry when they need me, more for something to do than for the pay of course. I lived in the summer home until Mother died in 1985, and then I moved back into Grimmauld Place."

"Keep Grimmauld Place for yourself. I know I'll have to conduct some of the family business there, but I will never move back in full time. Is it as gloomy as it was when we were kids?"

"I've cleaned it up a bit, but so much of it is Dark heirlooms that I can't get rid of, and Kreacher would be distraught if I removed his ancestor's heads from the walls, so it's not much improved. Oh, and Mother's portrait is in the entrance hall with a Permanant Sticking Charm that only she can release."

"Wonderful. I can't wait to see her again. Maybe I'll travel there exclusively by floo so we don't have to cross paths."

"That might be wise. Her portrait is even more shrill than she was. Are you and Lupin still...?"

"We're working that out, but I think so."

"You'll have to designate an Heir, since neither of us have succeeded in producing one."

"It'll be Harry, of course. My will already leaves him anything that is mine to leave as my godson. If he and Lily are willing, I'll do a blood adoption for him too, to make sure the family magic will accept him."

Before Regulus left the hospital that day, he filled several vials with memories from their pre-Hogwarts years.

_Sirius and Regulus laid in Sirius' bed, talking late into the night._

_Sirius and Regulus played a seeker's game on the yard of their summer home. Regulus always won, since Sirius preferred to play beater._

_Sirius and Regulus sat under the stars, and Sirius told Regulus the stories of the constellations._

_Sirius taught Regulus to read._

_The Black family is in Ollivander's, and Regulus watches as Sirius picks up his wand for the first time._

_Sirius and Regulus prank the other children at one of their parents' parties, and laugh in the corner while the adults try to reverse it._

_Sirius sneaks into Regulus' room at midnight on his birthday._

"Hello, Love."

"My Moony! It's been so long!"

"Remus chuckled dryly and kissed Sirius' head. "It's been two days, Pads, and Regulus was here yesterday."

"Feels like forever." Sirius grinned brightly at Remus, but Remus wouldn't look away from where he was picking at his fingers in his lap. "What is it Moons?"

"I left you in there all this time, and I never saw what Lily did and demanded you have a trial. You could have been out years ago if I'd thought things through more."

"Things weren't exactly set up in your favor at the end of the war, Moons. I don't blame you."

"You don't?"

"I've talked about this bit with Healer Thompson already, so it's one of the better organized things in my mind. We let you believe I was the Secret-Keeper along with everyone else, so you had reason to suspect me when the rat betrayed us. And you lost pretty much everything in the space of twenty-four hours. I don't expect you to think things through in the situation you were in. Merlin knows I wouldn't have."

"When has Sirius Black ever thought something through, though? I'm the thinker here."

"I resent that. I am learning how to think things through right now, in preparation for being Harry's guardian when I'm recovered."

"I owe you an apology, at least."

"Apology accepted Moony."

Before leaving that day, Remus gave Sirius a proper kiss for the first time since he'd been released.

"One of the dementor's favorite memories to bring up was the day I ran away."

"What happened that day? We'll look at it the same way we did the other memories, and see what parts of your recollection were amplified or distorted by the dementors."

"My friends had told me so many times to just keep my head down that summer. The war was just getting started then, and my parents were Voldemort sympathizers to their cores in addition to being generally horrible people. My mother said something about werewolves being the scum of society, and I lost it. It was the summer after Moony and I had started dating and I couldn't sit there and listen to her say those things without standing up for my boyfriend. So I said that. I said that my boyfriend was a werewolf, and a half-blood. That was how I came out to them. They used the cruciatus curse on me. I couldn't say how long they held it, but by the time they let up I couldn't stand or use my right arm. We were in the floo room, blessedly, and I dragged myself over to the floo with my left arm and flooed to the Potters' house with nothing but my wand. It was a week before I was able to move around normally again. The Potter family healer said I was lucky to still have my mind intact, but my residual damage hit my body instead of my brain. I never fully regained feeling in my left foot."

Healer Thompson took a moment to organize her response. "I'm not sure I can identify any distortion in that. That is a truly horrible memory."

"I'm not sure the dementors could have made that one worse if they tried." Sirius replied morosely.

"Do you remember what happened afterwards, when you were with the Potter family?"

"Only vaguely. Remus and Regulus weren't there, so they can't give me any memories or stories about it. James slept in the guest room with me the whole week that I was recovering, barely left my side. I think Fleamont and Euphemia took me shopping for new clothes as soon as I could stand still to be measured. They promised me I'd never have to go back to my parents' house. Far as I know, my parents never tried to make me, so that promise was easy to keep."

"In your journaling the next few days, try to write as much about living with the Potters as you can. The more time you spend on those memories, the easier it should become to recall some of the details."

By the end of November, physical therapy had been reduced from daily sessions to three times a week. Sirius still met daily with Healer Thompson in the mornings, and wrote in the journal she gave him twice a day. Almost every afternoon he saw either Remus or Regulus, and they talked about the world since the war and childhood memories. On the days that neither of them could make it, someone he worked with as an Auror would sometimes come. Once, Minerva visited her ex-student. In December, Sirius was allowed to leave the hospital with a visitor for an hour once a week. Remus took him for walks around London and was always careful to watch the time, even when Sirius tried to pull him into an alley near the hospital and distract him.

As his mood improved Sirius grew more like his old, restless self. The routine which had been overwhelming a month ago was growing stale, and he yearned for true freedom. His eyes sparkled when he looked at Remus in the way that made the werewolf want to run away with him. He handled family business with more relish than he ever thought possible, purely for the break in the monotony it provided. It was the highlight of his day whenever he got a letter from Harry.

"Move in with me, Moony."

"In the hospital? I don't think that's allowed, Padfoot."

"Moony, no. When I get out. It can't be too much longer before they let me leave."

"Where will you be living?"

"One of the Black properties. Not Grimmauld Place. Probably the summer home. It's in the countryside, it's got at least 900 acres of land attached to it, with a wooded bit where we could run on the moons. The house is pretty huge, but not as big as the Manor would be. Plenty of room for both of us, and Harry too when I get custody."

Remus smiled at his lover's enthusiasm. It was something he had sorely missed. "Once you know when you'll be out, let me know so I can give notice at my flat. I'll move in with you."

Sirius' answering smile rivaled the star he was named for.


End file.
